


We Will Still Have Each Other

by stardustsroses



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, even though angsty jurdan is life, extra fluffy because that's just what i need in my life right now, i love this fluffy piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 11:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustsroses/pseuds/stardustsroses
Summary: A closer look at some of the tender moments between Jude and Cardan, before and after their “A year and a day” deal. Meanwhile, Cardan suggests a new deal to Jude. | post-the cruel prince





	We Will Still Have Each Other

Jude  
There is something exceptionally beautiful about the way he wears a crown.  
I can stare at him forever, I realize, as I watch the High King lounge on his throne, a lazy cat with a full belly, playing with his wine glass. The others are watching him too, but with a weariness that was not there before; with a sort of frightened admiration mixed with well-placed scepticism.   
No one expected the last son of Eldred Greenbriar to fit so well on that throne. But only I know the weight of that crown. I placed it there, after all.  
Today marks the first – last – year of Cardan’s reign. The faeries dance to their hearts’ desires, gushing to each other, gracefully stumbling over one another, simultaneously attempting to gain the attention of their king, and yet somehow avoiding the coal eyes that mark their every face altogether.  
And I?  
I walk among them like I am them, but knowing fully well that I’m something less, something more. And Cardan knows it too – when his eyes meet mine at the end of the room, so quickly he didn’t even have to search for me, for he always knows where – how –to find me, there it is. The gleam in his eyes. The wickedness, the playfulness, the pure, unending viciousness. His mouth widens into a sharp-fanged smile, and I recognize it for the challenge that it is.  
I sip my wine and turn away, my dress whooshing behind me.  
I feel him rise off the throne. And his booming voice, that rough rasp, echoes, “Thank you all for coming.” Another vicious smile. “What a prosperous year it has been, for so many reasons.”  
I feel it coming, and it takes me only half a second to move past the courtiers barring my way to the double doors. His court stares at him, with both marvel and that same weariness in their faces, as they listen to their unpredictable king. My heart races, and my legs feel like gelatine. I know what he is about to do, and I cannot leave this room fast enough.  
“But most importantly,” his speech continues, loud and taunting and clearly meant for me. “We have someone to thank for it.”  
My hands touch the doors-  
“Jude.”  
Shit.  
Every eye in the room finds me. A sea of scornful mouths and judgmental gazes, jealousy and hatred filling every single one of the faces turned to me. And then – his own eyes, shining in the faerie lights, dark colours woven together like a starless night sky. Eyes I hated. Eyes I love.  
Eyes I currently resent.  
“Congratulate her,” he says to his people, his eyes never leaving mine. There is a hard command in that tone, a ruthless authority that leaves no space for debate. For disobedience. “Your kingmaker held a sword between every threat and your safety. She protected this kingdom.”   
I dare to meet every pair of eyes that threaten to shoot daggers at me. Their king says, so low, “Bow.”  
And every knee hits the floor.  
I let out a long breath, looking up at Cardan. What are you doing, my eyes scream.  
Why, Jude, this is all part of the fun, I can imagine him saying, in that obnoxious way of his.  
“Make way for her,” he smiles.  
One by one, the courtiers drag their knees away, clearing my path towards the throne. Towards him.  
A year and a day. That’s what he promised me. A year and a day – and I only had one day left. Cardan intends to make the most of it, it seems.  
“Jude,” he coaxes, so softly, the warmth of his words like hands that wrap around my neck, gently, yet hard enough to make me wonder if he would dare to choke the life out of me.   
I hesitate. Watch the courtiers watching their angry expressions reflected on the floors, and then I raise my gaze. Cardan smiles. No one would recognize the details in that smile – the small parting of his lips, the way he doesn’t hide the quivering of the corner of his mouth, the absence of hatred. The presence of something else entirely.  
I walk between the growling wolves, feeling their claws close to my ankles, until I’m walking the small steps to the dais where I find him waiting for me.  
A hand snakes around my middle. A hand paused at my back. I realize I should be shaking, I should be shrinking. I should be having any other reaction than smug satisfaction and yet-  
He looks down at me as he pulls me close. The smile is gone. “You are dismissed,” he says, as if he were talking to me. And then the room is cleared, his court leaves, rubbing their knees without a single word of protest, and then everything is silent save for our breaths.  
“Where were you?” He asks, as if he’s teasing me. The smile is back. He cranes his neck, head to the side, watching me with playful, narrowed eyes. His hand squeezes the small of my back.  
I raise an eyebrow at him, “Spying for you, of course.”  
“Of course,” he repeats. “Where were you, really?”  
“Why do you want to know?”  
“I want to know if there’s a knife hidden somewhere in this flowery gown of yours,” he shoots back, nearing my lips. We’re sharing breath as we speak. “I want to know if there’s a chance that you might be planning to stab me in my sleep tonight.”  
“Oh?” I entertain the idea, raising my eyes to the roof in a thoughtful manner. “If I indeed had a knife to assassinate you with…where exactly could I hide it?”  
He smirks. “I have a few ideas.” His eyes lower to my breasts.  
I stop myself from laughing by looking down at my own cleavage. “No knife there, it seems. Pity – it would have been a great plan.”  
Cardan takes the time to lift his eyes back to my face. “A year and a day – almost over. You’re sure you’re not planning to threaten me into staying on this throne?”  
I know the gleam in his eyes is real, that the warmth of his touch is real, that the playful words are simply a joke to him. And yet my tone is serious when I respond with a, “No.”  
He examines my seriousness. Says, “Anyone else might be planning to take this throne by the end of the next night, Jude.”  
“Let them try,” I tell him. “If you don’t wish to stay – then I’m not going to force you, Cardan. You gave me a year and a day. That was our deal.”  
“What will you do, then?”  
“I will figure it out,” I tell him. “I always do.”  
Even though I had placed this weight on his shoulders, Cardan and I had leaned on each other these past few months. Truth be told, he was as unpredictable as he promised me he would be, but the change in him started quickly. I saw it happen behind closed doors. I sensed it with gentle touches and even mocking words that held not the hatred that once reigned him, but the sense of companionship that bound us together. I thought once that I would be ready to threaten him, when the time came. Threaten him into saving my brother’s throne. I thought that by protecting Cardan and his throne, I was protecting my sisters and my brother. What ended up happening, however, was something else entirely.  
And I now find that I could never do it to him. Not after everything. Not after all those nights.  
“Or,” he whispers, leaning in to land a feather of a kiss on my neck. I tremble, letting my eyes close on their own accord. “I could always stay.”  
“But you don’t really want that,” I tell him, gaining back the strength to look up at him as he pulls away from me.  
“No,” he admits.  
There’s a pause in which we stare at each other, memories flashing between us. I could have him every night lounging on my bed, with his arms underneath his head, his pale skin hidden underneath my sheets. And yet I could never really prepare myself enough not to feel astounded at the amount of warmth his eyes could hold.  
It still leaves me breathless and clinging to him. Despite what he just pulled with his court for his little enjoyment at seeing me squirm and redden, I still do cling to him, letting my hands drag over the lapels of his gold jacket, smoothing the white, frilly shirt underneath.  
I feel him watching me in this silenced moment, but I continue my ministrations. Because I can. Because maybe I did miss him a little tonight.  
I tug on the frills at the center of his shirt, smiling when I notice his tail become very, very, suspiciously still, waiting for what I’ll do next. The contours of his chest are felt under my hands as I trace the buttons going up to his collar. He undid three of them, showing the very top of his chest. With a brief look at him, I button those last three back up, right up to his neck. Cardan breathes a laugh, popping them open again in defiance.   
These quiet moments with him are my favourite. Those in which we’re simply busy enjoying each other’s company, and I marvel at how easy it is to let myself go, let the memories of cruel words and gentle apologies go, and simply…live this with him while I still can. I touch him slow, the way I wish time would go, and he lets me, simply observing me. No mocking words now. No provocations. We had time for that already.  
My hands drag upwards once more, taking their time, though now I move up to his shoulders and push his jacket off. It falls to the floor in a pile of gold glitter. Cardan still watches me as my hands caress the front of his chest. “Ridiculous,” I breathe, looking down at his shirt. He lets out a rasp of a laugh, rough around the edges, as if he already expected that same line from me. I untuck his shirt from his trousers, and let it hand loose, free. As I’m used to seeing him.  
When I look up at him again, Cardan is leaning in. He stops, as if waking up from a daze, eyes drifting from my eyes to my lips and up again. I weave my fingers through his curls, pushing them back from his forehead. I call back all the times I saw him do it just the same way, from different points of view: on top of me, caught in the middle of a laugh, flicking his hair away from his eyes before leaning down to take my lips; during his sleep, frowning and scrunching up his nose when the tips tickle him, his arm pushing the unruly strands away, so clumsily; underneath me, all smirks and daring eyes, fingers combing through the dark curls.  
My hand stops at the back of his neck, fingers still woven in the thickness of his hair. A pause. His fingers lift my chin, and then he’s kissing me.  
Cardan has me curved against his body, his fingers digging into the small of my back. He kisses me like he misses me, like he cannot wait to have me, like he couldn’t have spent another wretched minute without me wrapped up in his arms.  
It’s a strange feeling to need someone this much. Kissing Cardan feels like taking a gulf of air into your lungs after being underwater for an eternity. A relief, an undoing. It’s the one thing that releases the tension from my bones, eases my mind. And it’s a kiss that fuels the fire, and I might as well burn for the rest of my days.  
He ends it with a shaky breath, eyes closed. I follow the lines of his lips, feeling him breathe against me. Cardan says, halting a soft laugh, “You’re not here to assassinate me, really?” He touches my lips again, once, so gently. “I beg to differ,” he smirks, before placing another kiss on my bottom lip, right in the middle.  
I blink, attempting to gather my wits about me. “Why did you have to make them bow?” I complain, frowning in embarrassment.  
“Did you not enjoy it?”  
“No.”  
A laugh against my ear. “You lie so horrendously. Makes me feel stupid for ever being jealous of that ability of yours.”  
“You shouldn’t have done it,” I push, craning my neck to look up at him. “It only brings us more attention.”  
“And why wouldn’t we want that, Jude?” He asks, thumb dragging along my bottom lip. I feel an urge to bite his finger. “I love attention.”  
“It wouldn’t be for a good reason, Cardan.”  
“Good. I love getting attention for all the bad reasons.”  
“Cardan.”  
“They should thank you,” he tells me, like it’s obvious. “You know it. I should thank you, too.”  
“You never wanted the crown,” I say, sighing. “I-“  
“Yes, I know,” he interrupts, impatient. “You’re sorry dadada. But we’ve figured out that I’m actually a pretty good king-“  
My laugh is a snort.  
“-with you at my side. Let me finish, Jude. Gods.” He smirks again, wildly this time. “And,” he adds, lifting a finger. “We discovered that, surprise surprise – we actually make a good team. Isn’t that right?”  
I watch him sceptically, wondering which side of us, of our relationship, he’s describing. “We do?” I ask.  
“In all ways,” he nods, smiling like a tiger eyeing a mouse. “Especially physical – don’t you think?”  
I knew it.  
I have to shake my head at him, and I have to smile. Childish. Immature. So, so immature. And still, his smile widens further when he watches me try to hide my own amusement, as if my expression just gives him further confirmation for his statement.  
“How does that help with you being a good king, exactly?”  
“It keeps us both happy,” he shrugs.  
“How charming of you to say.”  
“I speak only the purest of truths, love.”  
I roll my eyes at him, and he smiles.  
I think he’s going to say something, but then he’s beckoning me closer again. I close the distance between us, expecting him to lean down and kiss me, but then he’s scooping me into the air. It’s so sudden that I don’t have time to oppress a squeal. He laughs softly against my ear, and then sits us both down on the throne, his tail wagging enthusiastically behind him.  
I’m sideways on his lap, my legs extended over the throne of thorns. I see his tail come closer, eager to push the hair away from my face, but I swat it away, eyeing it with a frown, making Cardan chuckle against me in the process. He nears me, kissing the tip of my scrunched nose. “Moody Jude,” he coos.  
“We don’t have time to lounge here,” I complain, gesturing. “As you said, someone might be plotting against you as we speak, and I need-“  
“You need to stay here, with me, and do nothing else but enjoy the privilege of being in my company.”  
“I despise you.”  
“Another human term for I love you, I’m sure,” he smirks, leaning down to kiss me.  
I plant a hand on his face. “Cardan, you should be worried.”  
He peels it off, pouting like a child for a second. “I don’t – I have my grand knight protecting me from all terrible things in this world.”  
I glare at him. Cardan sighs, and takes my hand in his, locking our fingers together. There’s some tension in the way that he holds me, and I can’t help but notice the stiffness of his shoulders whenever his body inclines towards me.   
“Do we have to discuss this now?”  
“Yes.”  
“Because I would rather be doing something else.”  
“You-“  
“Have I told you,” he begins, letting his other hand wrap around my hair, fingers twirling the walnut curls, “how hideous you look tonight?”  
The same warmth in those words make me stop momentarily. He smiles, knowing he’s won, knowing perfectly well that he’s managed to take me somewhere else for a split second. And Cardan, being Cardan, takes full advantage of it.  
He smiles, remembering what I remember, and lets his lips touch my cheek, lingering there.   
“No,” I murmur back to him, smiling despite myself. “Tell me.”  
He doesn’t say anything.   
Cardan makes a pathway of kisses from my cheek to the corner of my lips. And once more, they linger there. He breathes against me, eyes closed, hands snaking to my sides. He pulls me somehow closer to him, and the side of me meets the front of him. A kiss on the corner of my mouth, a kiss on the center. He turns his face, kisses me fully.  
My arms wrap around his shoulders, wanting him even closer. It’s wrong, how much we should be doing something else instead of this. It’s wrong thinking that I prefer to stay here, in his arms, breathing in his scent, delighting in his warmth, than worry about what comes next.  
I feel his eyebrows furrow in the way they always do when he’s restraining himself. My distracted mind is still lucid enough to notice how his fingers curve around my skirts, itching to rip them. I stop the kiss before he can.  
“The sun is coming up,” I whisper, eyes still closed, because I don’t know what else to say. I want to keep feeling him like this, undone before me. I want to ignore life and only feel this. My forehead rests on his, my fingers tight around his shirt.  
“I’ll stay,” he says suddenly, abruptly, also a whisper.  
“What?” I don’t know what he means.  
“I’ll stay,” he repeats, almost as if he’s talking to himself then. When I open my eyes, I see his are locked on my lips. “On one condition.”  
Stay. Stay on the throne. Help me preserve it for my brother.   
I want to tell him that I don’t want him to. I want to tell him to walk away, free, unshackled from the weight I put on him. But I don’t.  
“What’s that?”  
He pulls away, looks at me. “Rule with me.”  
It shouldn’t have surprised me but it does. My throat closes, my heart races. My lips part, but no sound comes out, and so I close my mouth, staring at him in stunned silence.  
“Rule with me,” he says, too serious for my liking. He doesn’t sound like himself. “Rule with me, Jude.”  
“Are you crazy?” I whisper.  
“Maybe,” he says. “Have I ever looked or sounded like anything else to you?”  
I stare at him, dumbfounded. “You don’t want this crown,” I remind him, tripping on my own words.  
He pauses, considering. I watch him bite the inside of his cheek before he mumbles, “I want it if I’ll get to share it with you.”  
“Cardan…”  
“It works, Jude. It works.”  
Does it? Would it?   
I shake my head, taking a breath. “It will not prevent someone from taking the throne. You do realize that, don’t you? If anything – it will anger them more to put someone like me on the throne.”  
He looks irritated now. “I will kill anyone who questions you.”  
“It doesn’t work like that.”  
“I don’t care,” he shoots back stubbornly. “We have a better chance if we’re together to keep the throne until the time comes to give it up.”  
I can see it then. Me and him. I can see it.  
And yet I can also see that he will not stand it if I’m not beside him. He will crumble underneath this crown. He will shatter this shackles, and maybe destroy what little is left of this reign. The Cardan that I know will never settle for a cage, not even a golden one. He will not stand this cage if I’m not there with him, with the key to open the door whenever he needs to be free.  
It’s a long silence before I speak again. I let my hand pause on his cheek, my thumb tracing patterns on his skin. I watch him watching me, see myself reflected in the dark pools of his eyes. See him leaning into my touch, craving it more than ever.  
I tell him, “You don’t need to crown me to have me by your side.”  
He kisses the palm of my hand. Says, “Maybe I want to crown you.”  
“Why?”  
“Why not?”  
I simply stare as he takes my hand and drags his lips over every knuckle, every bruise. As if he’s distracted, thoughtful. Every kiss he gives me, no matter how small or how soft, sets me on fire.  
“If you do crown me,” I tell him, like it’s obvious. It’s a good impression of his own tone. “You will have to do more than that.” What I’m hinting at does not seem to faze him, and it makes me think that perhaps I’m not being clear enough. “You understand that you’ll have to marry a mortal?”  
And for all my sarcasm in those words, and even teasing, Cardan responds without a single tone of mockery. His words are firm, levelled, like he’s thought and practised them several times over. “I know.”  
And it’s that frankness that stops my heart in my chest.  
“Marry me,” he says. A kiss between the knuckles of my middle and ring fingers.  
I’m an avalanche of falling stars. “You’re not serious.” The whole sky comes crashing down on me.  
“Why wouldn’t I be serious, Jude?”  
I realize he’s been waiting for this. Every line of conversation…he’d been leading up to this very moment.   
I pull my hand away from his, and Cardan looks up at me. I see that he’s startled.  
“What?” Is all I manage to whisper.  
“Do humans not know what marriage is?”  
My mouth is wide open. “You cannot mean it.”  
He leans back into the throne, sighing, eyes raised towards the ceiling, “Jude-“  
“You’ve lost your mind.” I’m hysterical. “You’ve completely lost your mind.”  
I don’t understand the panic inside me, the shock. But I can’t find anything else to say, anything else to do-  
Cardan stares at me. And, plain-simple, he tells me, “I’m way past caring, Jude – what others think, what others what; what is expected of me and what’s not. I’m way past caring that you and I are different. You, a human, have had more of a heart than any other person in my family, and I can’t bring my damn self to keep believing all that crap they’ve spent years teaching me. Believe me,” he says, placing a hand on my cheek. I’m once more taken aback at how gentle he can be. How gentle he is. “Believe me when I tell you I love you, Jude.”  
Three, six, then nine seconds pass. He’s turned me inside out.  
As if he’s afraid of what I’m going to say, he looks down at my lips, avoiding my eyes. “It would be really nice if you said something now.”  
I open my mouth. Close it. And I try again, “You…you want to marry me.”  
“Yes.”  
“You love me.”  
“…Yes.”  
“What about that time you said what you felt for me was disgusting?”  
“Still is – feelings are disgusting. I can’t say I’m proud of it,” he smirks, so teasing. “You are, indeed, what I would call ‘disgusting’, Jude.” He cups my face, kissing me once. “Disgustingly adorable.”  
“What, why-“  
“I asked you to marry me and you don’t know what to do with yourself.”  
I wonder what he expected, what reaction he anticipated. By his own reaction a few moments earlier, the avoidance of my eyes, I would say he was not very confident in himself. And now-  
“You want to marry me?” I ask again, stunned, hands on his chest. “Holy- You are serious.”  
“So you’ve just ignored all I’ve been saying, uh?”  
“I-“  
I laugh.  
I burst out laughing, like he’s just told me the most ridiculous of jokes.   
“I ask you to marry me and your reaction is to laugh,” he nods his head. “That’s just…not at all what I expected.”  
“What did you expect?”  
“Maybe a slap in the face. A little stab. Maybe a few threats here and there.”  
And he means it. Of course it does.  
“You thought I would stab you if you asked me to marry you?”  
“I was pretty sure.”  
I stare at him in disbelief, shaking my head. “You…” I begin, but I don’t finish it. I kiss him instead.  
It takes him by surprise, for Cardan jolts in his seat, his tail rock straight. But then he’s touching my cheeks, deepening our kiss, making me wish I had the space to lay him down and kiss every corner of his face and the rest of him.   
He’s smiling.  
And it takes me a minute to compose myself, because he keeps smiling as he kisses me, as he holds me, and does not stop. Everytime he needs to take a breath, he pulls away once, just to turn his face, before claiming my lips again. My heart is in shambles. I can almost feel the happiness around him.  
“Cardan,” I breathe, pushing at his chest gently, but his lips soon touch my neck and I’m gone. His hand drags from my cheek, down to my neck, the side of my breast, to stop at my hip, inching me closer and closer to him. My eyes flutter shut, but I manage to say, “Cardan.”  
His lips stop, his mind detecting the change in my voice.  
He looks at me. Full of hope.  
“Say yes to me,” he murmurs, almost desperately. “Say yes.”  
“I told you – you don’t have to crown me to have me by your side. I…” I touch his cheeks, making him look at me, making sure he knows. “I wil not leave, Cardan.”  
“I couldn’t give a shit about the crown, Jude,” he says. “This is not about the crown, it couldn’t be further from it. I want you. Gods, I want you. Just you. Damn the rest of the world.”  
He would leave it all if I asked him now. I know it, just looking at him. He would move mountains, destroy kingdoms, make his own fall to the ground in pieces if that would have made me say yes to him. And it scares me.  
It scares me even more to know I would do the same.  
“Do you not want this?” He asks.  
Do you not want me?  
There is not a bit of accusation in his tone. Nothing. Just a question.  
“I love you.”  
His eyes clear, the clouds rolling away. But still he says, “But you don’t wish to marry me.”  
“I’m frightened, Cardan.”  
“Of me?”  
“Of what we could become.”  
Make or break. Which one would it be?  
Cardan takes my hand, but he’s silent. He wants to protest, I see it. But he does not wish to push me. He won’t.  
“Cardan,” I say. He looks at me. I hesitate, before I say what’s on both of our minds. “There will be a time when you will not have me.”  
He frowns. Looks away, like he wants to dismiss the thought.   
“Look at me,” I urge him, grabbing his chin and gently turning his gaze to me. I smile sadly, “I am a single day of your whole life.”  
“Don’t say that-“  
“It’s the truth,” I say. “You will not want me when I’m old, Cardan.”   
“How do you know?”  
I watch him. I could say it, but maybe I don’t want to face it either. So I just rest my head on his chest, leaning into him, and let my nose graze the side of his neck, the warmth.  
Sunlight starts to stream through the windows, but neither of us moves. I want this to last a little longer, before I have to think to mourn us.  
Until I hear him say, close to my hair, “I would look very handsome as a mortal. Just saying.”  
“I don’t doubt you,” I smile.  
He smiles too, I know it, even if I cannot see his face. He says, “I would do pretty well as a human, don’t you think?”  
A chuckle comes out of me. I look at him. “No, Cardan, you wouldn’t.”  
“You would teach me the ways.”  
He’s actually considering it. I raise my eyebrows at him. “Did someone poison your drink? Is that where the delusions are coming from?”  
“I would do it,” he insists, “It might not be a very bad life, Jude. Might turned out to be all I ever wanted.”  
He kisses one of my fingers, and places my hand atop his heart. He continues, “I might even know a way.”  
“To turn you human?” I ask in disbelief.  
“I read some things,” he gestures nonchalantly. “Might have searched. Once.”  
“You read some things,” I repeat. “Why would you search for ways to turn into a human?”  
He eyes me. “Curiosity,” he shrugs. “Just…boredom. I don’t know.”  
He is the strangest creature I have ever met.  
“It can also do the opposite, apparently,” he says, still in the nonchalant tone, as if he’s coaxing a child to do what he’s told. I might have some candy…if you do this.   
“Are you serious?”  
“You’ve been asking that a lot lately.”   
“That’s not possible,” I tell him. “If such information was to be written in a book…then there had been a lot more cases, right?”  
“Not necessarily, Jude,” he tells me. “Humans don’t know we exist. Faeries are terrified of them, so-“  
“You are?”  
“-there had never been a motive for either one to want to stray away from their worlds.”  
“Are you seriously attempting to convince me that there has never been a case like ours before?”  
“And what case is that?” That cat-grin again.  
I roll my eyes, annoyed that he would make me say it. “Humans and faeries falling in love.”  
“AH. You love me.”  
I blink lazily at him.  
“Yes, well – not that we know of. Maybe centuries ago. Maybe in the future there’ll be lots more.”  
It’s brand new information. And something that could potentially create a disastrous result, but-  
“What is it then?”  
“A powerful brew,” he says.   
“Oh.”  
“What?”  
“That sounds so anti-climactic,” I mutter. He eyes me in confusion. “I don’t know, maybe I expected some grand gesture to be made. Or a sacrifice. Being struck by lightning while standing on top of a three-headed goat, who knows? Your world has some very strange things.”  
His laughter rings in my ears. Cardan clutches his stomach, and the sounds he’s making even end up turning me into a giggling mess. Contagious, that laugh.  
“And you wonder why I love you,” he says, shaking his head.  
His eyes shine as he looks up at me.  
We pause, still embraced in the fit of laughter from before. When we come down from it, I let my fingers trace the line of his jaw, the outer part of his eye. His face softens when Cardan says, “So you see, Jude,” a quick kiss to the palm of my hand, “when the time comes and we have to decide – we have a lot of options.”  
“I stay immortal with you or you die with me?” I scoff.  
He smiles, nodding. “Yes.”  
“And you’d be fine with either one?”  
His answer still surprises me. “Yes.”  
“You really do love me.”  
“I’ve been trying to tell you that for some time now,” Cardan muses, playfully biting my thumb.  
I move it away from his mouth, and replace it with my own.  
I have a thousand more kisses to give him, but before I can, Cardan asks me, “Marry me.”  
And this time I tell him, “I might not be the wife you expect.”  
“What’s a wife I expect?”  
“To fluff your pillow.”  
“I don’t want you to fluff my pillow, Jude,” Cardan says. “You might put needles in it.”  
I chuckle, touching my nose to his. “I wouldn’t be so cruel. Maybe some knives under your mattress.”   
“Oh, you really do love me,” he says. “Is it a yes?”  
I look at him. “We might turn this world into ash, Cardan.”  
“We definitely will.”  
“It’s not a good thing.”  
“As long as we still have each other,” he shrugs. “This whole world can burn to ashes for all I care.”  
I twist in his arms, facing him. The new angle allows me to kiss every corner of his face – and I do. I take a long time doing so.   
“Say yes,” he whispers. “Say you want me.”  
He takes my lips again, before I can give him my answer. It’s a claiming. It’s him desperately asking me to claim him.  
His hands at my back lean me back on the throne, until he has access to my neck. His kisses make my head roll back, and I’m forced to wrap my arms around his neck to keep me from falling back completely. Every touch of his lips is a question.  
His mouth trails down to my cleavage, and I fist the hair at the top of his head to steady myself, to keep me tied to this world. And I want to say it to him, I want to tell him how much I want it, but the way he’s coaxing the word out of me makes me not able to speak at all.  
“Please,” he whispers against my skin, pressing me harder against him.   
Not being able to bear it any longer, I touch his cheeks, making him look up at me. I’m breathless, and the word comes out as a whisper, “Yes.”  
“You’re mine?” He asks, eyes trailing all over me.  
“I’m yours.”  
I lean in to kiss him, but I feel two pats on my shoulder. I look away from him to his tail. I blink, watching as Cardan takes a box out of his pocket.  
“You’re joking,” I whimper, a mix of a laugh and a groan, as I let my forehead fall on his shoulder. “You’re…you had it planned. Of course.”  
“Of course.” He grins.   
He opens it, saying, “Not the family ring. It means nothing to me. This – I had it made. It suits you.”  
“This is so…very human of you.”  
“I don’t think you’d appreciate the faerie gifts,” he drawls, smirking. “Look, Jude.”  
I look at it, and refrain from gasping. Beautiful, yes, but something else entirely. I don’t know a first thing about rings, but this one is intricately made, with lines and thorns and branches etched onto it. Red stones accompanied the gold circle all around. Small white gems in the middle made it shine.  
“Are you crying?”  
“No.” I snatch the ring, keeping my eyes firmly on it. I hold it to my heart. “A little.”  
“You are so beautiful when you’re surprised.”  
“Don’t say that,” I tell him, touching a finger to his mouth. “Don’t be…this Cardan now. I don’t want to cry in front of you.”  
“Most beautiful gem in the world,” he says, smiling, grinning so wide and wildly I’m actually stunned.   
“Go back to calling me disgusting, please.”  
“I can’t – I love you,” he says, wiping a rebellious tear away from the corner of my eye. He wipes another, before it can escape.   
“I wish you could lie sometimes,” I sob quietly, leaning against him. I embrace him, my wet cheek against his. “I love you. Thank you.”   
He’s silent for a long time, just holding me. I feel him tremble against me. “Cardan?” I ask, pulling away.  
His face is turned away, but I catch sight of him in time to see his eyes redden. “Oh my-“ I start. “Are you going to cry?” I sniff.  
He sniffs in response. “No.”  
I smile. Turn his face to me. “Let me see.”  
His eyes gleam. He contains himself well enough, but I don’t. I’m a mess all over again. “Look at you,” I say. “Not a heartless ass after all.”  
“Surprise,” he chants.  
I smile gently. “Who knew,” I muse to no one. “Who knew, indeed.”  
“Here,” he says, composed, taking the ring from my hand. He places it on my middle finger.  
I chuckle. “No, Cardan.” I place the ring on the right finger, showing him.   
“Oh,” he says. “Picky humans.”  
I hold him. “Are you mine?” I ask him.  
“I’m yours,” he tells me. “Can’t really do anything about it now, right?”  
“Do you have to ruin everything?”  
“Yes,” he says confidently. “As a matter of fact I do.”  
“I don’t know why I love you.”  
“I’ll give you a list someday, love.”  
I place a hand on his mouth when Cardan leans in to kiss me. He furrows his eyebrows.  
I tell him, “I have a condition too.”  
“Do tell.”  
“You can never call me ‘love’ again.”  
“Why?”  
“It sounds oddly creepy coming from you.”  
“You’re very strange, Jude, dear. Even for a mortal.”  
I smile, “’Jude, dear’?”  
“What else will you have me call you, my future wife?”  
“Not that.”  
“Darling?” he kisses my throat.  
“No,” I groan.  
“Sweetheart?”  
“Yuck.”  
“Baby?”  
“Don’t you dare.”  
“Queen?” He whispers against my ear.  
I shiver. “That’s fine.”  
I feel his laughter shaking his chest. Cardan lifts us up, my legs around his hips, my rams around his neck.  
“Where are you taking me?” I laugh.  
“Our bedroom, of course. Need to start making some pretty little heirs, now, don’t we?”  
I sneer at him. “Don’t even joke about it.”  
His laughter follows me all the way back to his – our – room, and it still rings in my ears when he lays me down onto the bed. He’s raised on his forearms, taking in every inch of me. His fingers comb through his hair, pushing it away from his forehead.  
“Queen does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” He smirks, kissing the underside of my jaw. “My queen and wife. Mine.”  
I tremble again, useless when he wraps me up in his arms.  
“Cardan.”  
“Hm?”  
I hesitate, watching him. “Promise me it will always be like this.”  
And I don’t have to explain it to him for him to understand what I mean. Cardan knows. He hungers for it too – a lifetime of this. No matter how long that lifetime is.  
He seals his promise with a kiss. And many more, throughout the day.  
Even when he’s lying beside me, my back against his chest and his arms around me, he still says it, “I promise, Jude, dear.”  
I turn in his arms, watching the sunlight play and dance on his features as he sleeps. I murmur, so low, “I love you.”  
Even if the world turned to ash.  
And I don’t know if he heard me, so I close my eyes, and let myself be taken to sleep by his slow breathing, by the warmth of his body, by the steady beat of his heart. The ring on my finger is weightless, and yet I can feel it there, pressing against his chest, a promise between us. When I’m so close to falling asleep, I hear a distant yet close whisper reply, “I love you.”  
Even if the world turned to ash, I know I would love him. Be by his side. And I know, that even if it ended in any other way, he would still love me, like this, for as long as we were allowed to live.


End file.
